Why We Dance

What most of us do is sit and think all day. We might wiggle our fingers on a keyboard, but for the most part, our body is simply a conveyance for our brains. I don't think this is how man is meant to live.

We have an extraordinary ability to think and to learn. Our culture prizes this ability beyond all else. But how we are meant to live is through our bodies in contact and harmony with our surroundings. Thinking becomes a tool, like your hand. Where would we be without hands? But when you think about it, hands are very limited in what they can do. They can't digest food, they can't dream, they can procreate.

Becoming embodied, that is, to fully inhabit our bodies, to let our bodies provide our experience, and to let our bodies be expressive, is to be more fully human. As Gabriel Roth said, "The quickest way to quiet the mind is the move the body."

It is in quieting the mind and becoming embodied that we become more fully human as well as more aware of being part of the great Oneness of all things. Most of us have precious few opportunities for this sort of experience in our lives and yet it is what we yearn for.

It is my experiences at dance events that I had some of the first and most powerful experiences of my self since I was a child. I continue to revel in this uncensored, spiritual play of human animal responding to the beat of the music. What I experience is joy, peace, bliss.

Cognitive neuroscience tells us that when improvising to music, the right and left hemispheres and the limbic system, the emotional brain, are balanced and integrated. When that happens we experience joy, peace and bliss. This is the state we are meant to be in most of the time. This is what it is like to be balanced, responsive to one's surroundings, flowing and free and flexible, active and centered. This is why we dance.